Poetry

So I don’t know how long I have been reading poetry, but I have always been a fan. There is just something different about it that draws on the soul’s emotions and draws us together. Even in the most shrouded of themes, you can somehow feel what the Poet is trying to say, whether or not we can even vocalize it.

Here are some quotes about poetry:

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~Leonard Cohen

Poetry is what gets lost in translation. ~Robert Frost

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato, Ion

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. ~W.B. Yeats

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows. ~Edmund Burke

And your very flesh shall be a great poem. ~Walt Whitman
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. ~Edgar Allan Poe

I’ll post on poetry from time to time. I love to post quotes and powerful feelings

To the States

To the states or anyone of them, or any city of the states,resist much, obey little
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty.

Walt Whitman

I love this, because I never realized what a patriot Whitman was. It is concise and effective. Whitman is definitely one of the giants in poetry, and I love reading his poems.

Here is my favorite poet, T.S. Eliot, in one of my favorite poems ever. Its excerpts from “Choruses from “The Rock.”

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to our death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The Cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us father from God and nearer to Dust.

I was told: we have too mant churches,

And too few chop-houses. There I was told:

Let the vicars retire. Men do not need the Chirch

In the place where they work, but where they spend their Sundays.

The Rock: The lot of man is ceaseless labour,

Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,

Or irregular labour, which is not plesant.

I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know

That it is hard to be really useful, resigning

Oh I want to post more, but I’m not sure if anyone is really all that interested. I’ll do a post about T.S. Eliot one of these days, and maybe you can fall in love with his writings too.

Here is one last post, which is from Seamus Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy”

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.